


Legend

by SwirlsOfBlueJay



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 16:07:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5462723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwirlsOfBlueJay/pseuds/SwirlsOfBlueJay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A retelling of Camelot's tale set post-series. What happened next?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Legend

As the end credits for the final episode of ‘Merlin’ roll up the screen he flicks his fingers at the television to magically turn it off. He sighs, knowing he should savour this retelling; it’s the closest to the truth yet. But he was hoping this would finally be the time when the whole story could be told. He will savour later, first he wishes to wallow for a while. He picks up his bag; it’s time to journey to Avalon. He hasn’t made the trip for almost a decade and he feels it calling to him in his bones.

He travels on foot alone, not stopping to eat or wash or sleep, just as he used to a millennia ago. Merlin remembers well those months after Arthur’s death. He would repeatedly ride –without breaking for rest- to the site of Arthur’s grave, seeking him out, bidding him to awaken. Merlin had been so confused, his destiny was to help Arthur unite the realms and they had only just begun. He hadn’t known what he was supposed to do. It quickly grew into obsession, he would forgo all else, until eventually he refused to move from Avalon. He had sat solid on the riverbank, waiting.

It was Guinevere who came to him then. She told him an enemy was at the gates, that Camelot needed him, that she needed him. He had done the only thing he could do, he served. She had been the one to pull him back from the brink, help him, and show him no doctrine of destiny could hold them back. It was then he realised that she may be capable of carrying the mantle Arthur was supposed to. That she might just be able to bring the realms together. It was on that day that he pledged himself to her truly, he had done so already, but this was a different promise. A promise to do whatever it took to help her bring about a United Kingdom.

 

 

*

 

 

It was months before Merlin realised a startling truth. Arthur would have never been able to achieve what Guinevere could. Arthur had done a lot, laid a vital foundation, sowed the seeds, but he couldn’t see. He was wise but also far too brash, heart too loud over his head, even at the end. And he would never have been able to bring magic back into the fold. His first reaction, even with Merlin’s magic, had been denial and fear, whereas Guinevere’s had been immediate recognition and understanding. To truly bring the realms together they needed the druids and other magic users on their side. They needed someone whose instinct was not to flinch from magic but to embrace it.

He and Guinevere worked for years side by side, forging alliances slowly, carefully. With strength and passion and determination they persevered through what they were convinced were impossible ends. And they came out the other side. Magic was widely accepted and their land had finally known peace.

 

 

*

 

 

Merlin waves on a truck driver offering a ride and keeps walking. He needs the time to think. Merlin had told the tale in many incarnations through the centuries, the ones starring Arthur prevailed and the ones showcasing Guinevere fell by the wayside, unremembered. It was not just sexism alone, but also people wanting a tale of swords and fighting instead of tales of weeks on end locked in long, and often tedious, steely negotiations. He had thought with all the progress of the twenty first century, with its strides in equality and its swaying towards a taste for the intellectual as opposed to for brawn, that the true tale would finally be given life. It was not to come to pass. He supposed it had little to do with the truth anymore. The tale was of Arthur, he was a hero in peoples’ hearts, and no one wanted to let that go. Even now when almost all thought him fictional. In a way it no longer mattered, it had after all been a thousand years, but Merlin still wanted Guinevere to have some credit for the amazing feat she achieved.

He stands on the riverbank of Avalon, only then allowing himself to relish all he’s done. It has been a long thousand years. Perhaps it was time to tell that story instead.

 


End file.
